


Shatter Me Slowly

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Holocaust, Jewish Character, World War II, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hermann Frank (Original Character) is a young boy during WW2.This is how his family is torn apart, and how everything is going to pieces.
Kudos: 2





	Shatter Me Slowly

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like Hermann's childhood is being stripped to pieces, and his vision of the world is shattered, so that's where the title came from.

**_July 8, 1942_ **

Joshua, my best friend, moved into my house after his parents were sent to a ghetto. Joshua and I are both Jewish, so I am afraid that my family will be next. My little sister, Amanda, is a great kid but she is a year old and she screams, so we can't go into hiding yet.

**_July 17, 1942_ **

It's been some time since I've written here, but a lot has happened since the 8th. We (Father, Joshua, and I) had started moving our belongings to our hiding place on the 9th, but while we were out of the house the Germans took Mother and Amanda. I know that no man should cry like a baby but I did and so did Father. We have heard about the horrors of Auschwitz and what cruel things the Nazis can do. If Mother, Father, Joshua, or Amanda don’t make it out alive then I don’t know what I’ll do. I keep wondering how my family would react if I didn’t make it out. 

When we Father realized what happened to Mother and Amanda he made us go into hiding prematurely. We had a few clothes, two blankets and barely enough food to last a week. After we depleted our food supply yesterday, father left to bring us more supplies. He hasn’t come back.

**_July 23, 1942_ **

The Germans are despicable and deplorable. Four days ago Joshua fell sick and our food depletion isn’t helping matters. I went outside of our hiding place, a cellar of an abandoned factory, to get food from my house but when I went close to the house I heard German voices! Not only did they cause the genocide of us Jews, but they started it because of a misguided notion that they are superior and we are inferior. Everyone is equal or at least we should be. Anyways, I still had to get food, but I couldn’t think straight after seeing the house which I had grown up in being occupied. I can see Joshua's hallowed face and his empty eyes staring at me as I told him we had nothing to eat.

**_July 25, 1942_ **

Today I snuck out of our hideout but then a German guard caught me. Joshua and I are going to a concentration camp. The Nazi soldier who caught me put me in a train and dragged Joshua out of where we were hiding. I don’t want us to be separated but we probably will be.

**_July 29, 1942_ **

Thankfully Joshua and I didn’t get separated but I feel like a tyrant for not stopping what happened today. The first thing I heard after waking up was Joshua coughing. It sounded like he was dying (and I don’t mean it figuratively) so I asked him what I could do to help. He brought out his pocket knife (which he had smuggled) and told me to kill him. I was shocked because I am not like the Nazis. I wouldn’t willingly kill anyone unless it was necessary. Joshua took my hand (the one which he had put his pocket knife into) in between his and said that I’d always be his best friend and the brother he never had. He then plunged the knife through his lung (his aim was atrocious) and I proceeded to listen to him die. I am trying to pretend that nothing happened but I am failing. I am trying to pretend like what happened was euthanasia and not outright suicide. When I close my eyes I hear him gasping out his last words. I hear him saying “It’s better like this.” Am I so bad that everyone wants to leave?

**_July 30, 1942_ **

I am not going to be able to write much today because I am going to try to escape. My camp gets a few trucks every now and then so I will try to hold onto the bottom of one of them until we reach the city or somewhere I would be unnoticed. 

**_August 1, 1942_ **

I found myself just outside of the place where my family’s old house used to be, so I know the area. I went to the only person who I know, Mrs. Schultz. She had lost a son in the First World War and she loved children so she practically half raised me. I knocked on her door, but instead of the tall, graceful, white-haired woman in her 70s, there was a tall, thin, strict woman in her early 40s. “What’s your name?” She asked and the first name that came to my mind was Arnold Elbert, so I said as much. Surprisingly, the woman let me in and I saw Mrs. Schultz’s surprised expression. Before she could call me by my real name I said, “Hello ma’am. I am Arnold Elbert, age 14 and I would like to work for you.”

_Mrs. Shultz let me work for her and she got fake documents made for me, changing my identity to Arnold Elbert._

**_THREE YEARS LATER_ **

I have had fake documents under the name Arnold for three years, and the last time anyone called me by my birth name was when I was 14, so I didn’t realize someone was calling my name at a Paris train station until they tapped on my shoulder and said “ Hermann Frank'' to me. I turned around to see Mother wrapped in a shawl, thinner than a stick, and with more white hairs than black. “Mother?” I asked, noting how different she was. Where there was once a youthful gleam in her eye was a haunted look. The lady standing in front of me was nothing like the happy, prideful, handsome woman I knew. She was broken, hurt, and empty. “Yes,” she whispered, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.” There were tears in her eyes but they weren’t the ‘I am glad to see my son’ but rather the ‘You look too much like my husband’ type. “ What happened to Aman—“, I started to ask, but I noted the change in her features. She glanced down at her hands and said, “There was nothing to eat and— and well, she was too heavy to carry around, so I—,” she broke off, choking on her words. I stared at her, dumbfounded, not knowing what to say. I would have killed any Nazi who decided to lay their finger on my sister in any way, but to know that it was my mother who killed my sister left me in shock. “Father and Joshua are also—” I started, but I was cut off by her sob. The person in front of me was practically a stranger and I didn’t know what to do. My existence would cause her pain and vice versa, so I did the only thing I could. I gave her all the money I had, a card with my current residence scrawled on it, and I got on my train.

Mother waved me off and I thought to myself, “It’s better this way.”

**Author's Note:**

> ** I use Germans and Nazis interchangeably, not because I am trying to be insensitive, but because I find it plausible that children would blame Germans as a whole for the Holocaust.  
> Also, I wrote this some time ago, so the tags may not fully cover the content.


End file.
